Welcome to the Macintosh Developer site by Thomas Tempelmann

This page contains programming information about Mac OS
that I assembled over the years and that might be helpful for
others like you, too. Unless otherwise noted, all information is
copyrighted 1999 by Thomas Tempelmann.

Overview

New: My Newton
page shows a project in the works for connecting your Desktop
computer to Newton Messagepads. It's open source.

The Desktop Database (aka. DT DB)

Documentation about the DTDB

Contents of the Desktop
Database and how the Finder and other extensions (such a Mac OS
Easy Open) build it.

The Finder's algorithm
for looking up the creator application of a specific document.
Also teaches some basics on File Types and Creator
Codes.

Desktop DB Diver (freeware)

This is a Macintosh application for viewing the contents of the
Desktop Database. I used it to analyze the DTDB
format and to test tools of mine like Reveal
Creator.

It does not have much documentation yet. Some items have
balloon help, however.

Usage: Either start to browse a DTDB from the given list of
volumes, or open a document (either by using Open from the menu or
by dragging a file onto the app) in order to view all applications
that are registered in the DTDB for that creator.

Some of my C libraries (free)

These are C source code files for different purposes that
I frequently use in my own projects. Feel free to use them, too,
but please leave my name as the originator in them in case others
find your copies and want to get in contact with the author (me or
whoever else).

QuitHandler provides a callback mechanism for cleanup
operations in case your application unexpectedly quits (for 68K
and Classic PPC only - for Carbon you can tell the Linker to call
a "Termination" routine instead).

LaunchLib is an extension and fix to Apple's LaunchWithDoc
sample code. It features a corrected way to search for the app of
a given creator, and adds functions to check and open CDEVs and
some useful stuff related to opening and quitting
applications.

FileLib has some additional File Manager related
functions.

PascalLib is a set of C-style string functions dealing with
Pascal strings.

KillOthers is another modfied Apple sample for quitting all
running apps, optionally including background processes and the
Finder.

LargeSet is a C++ class handling large boolean array in a
bitset type manner.